Tom Cary is The Telegraph's Formula One Correspondent. You can follow him on Twitter @tomcary_tel

Someone is not telling the truth. Is it Ferrari or FIA race director Charlie Whiting?

Fernando Alonso had a funny day on Sunday. His race was ruined once again by a safety car – the second time in two weeks after the "manipulated" (according to the Spaniard) result in Valencia. He then got changed into his football strip and watched his country win the World Cup from Ferrari's motor home in the Silverstone paddock. I'm not sure whether he would have taken the first result to get the second but I was at Ferrari too, watching the Dutch kick lumps out of the Spanish, and I can tell you he was pretty excited by the footy…

Ferrari, and Alonso, were both clearly fuming about the safety car incident during the race. To recap, Alonso cut a corner and overtook Renault's Robert Kubica. Two laps then went by in which Alonso did not give back position. Then Kubica retired.

Alonso was then informed by race control that he had to serve a drive-through penalty which, with the introduction of the safety car which bunched the field, dropped him back to 16th. He eventually finished 14th, out of he points, and Ferrari briefly thought about appealing the decision. They argued that they heard nothing from the race director, and then Kubica retired and they couldn't give back position even if they wanted to.

Charlie Whiting, the FIA's race director, says it happened rather differently. He has come out and said he told Ferrari three times to allow Kubica back past and they failed to heed his warnings.

"We told Ferrari three times that in my opinion they should give the position back to Kubica," Whiting said. "And we told them that immediately, right after the overtaking manoeuvre. On the radio, I suggested to them that if they exchange position again, there would be no need for the stewards to intervene.

"But they didn't do that and on the third communication they said that Kubica was by then too far back to let him regain the position. It's not true at all that the stewards took too long to decide. For us the facts were clear immediately: Alonso had gained an advantage by cutting the track."

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali saw it differently. "As soon as we received the information that in the opinion of the stewards, Fernando should have given back the position to Robert, Robert was already very far behind and Robert was really slowing down because he had a problem," he said. "You can have a situation where immediately there is a possibility to give back the position to a driver if you feel that there is really an advantage that you gain. On our side we felt that was not the case otherwise we would have done it."